Road to CHAMPION #4: Top Mistakes of a Splinterlands WHALE

I started Splinterlands exactly 1 month ago, on November 16th.

Since that wonderful date, I've invested $5000 USD and 4426 HIVE (~$7400). Total: $12,400.
I've read this puts me in the top 1% of asset holders. I plan to double down with packs, plots, and more.

On November 16 I bought my first card. A Level 5 Furious Chicken for $193.753. Not bad.
It went rapidly, tragically downhill from there.

You might ask why a completely new player would buy this Level 5 card. Asking that question would make you a much smarter person than me 😛😂🤑 How did a god fearing, otherwise intelligent family man make such grotesque and heinous errors?

Let's talk about the path I took, the mistakes I've made, and what I've learned.

Rookie Mistakes

After the chicken, I set my eyes on a Water Deck. Why? I don't know.
So I bought Wavesmith, Oshannus, and Gold Foil Sea Genie(?), Kelp Initiate, and Phantom + more.
Very absurd that my 3rd purchase EVER was $539(!) for a Coral Wraith. Why Coral Wraith?!

If I had done more research I would know:

1. Water Magic Decks aren't that great and not future proof
2. The cards I was buying were low demand and hard to sell.
3. Why. Just Why?

Underestimating the Market

I then found the MonsterMarket market-feed bot. I thought I was "sniping" the market. Picked up a Gold Water Elemental at $400, thinking I could flip it for below the $800 list price. Bought Alpha Frozen Soldiers. $300 on a Prismatic Energy. $258.95 on a Gold Ooze (not bad!).

After a few days I realized none of my "hot flips" were selling. Then I took a deeper look and saw that none of the cards I was buying had any activity. So now I'm stuck with even more cards that I can't sell. They've all tanked now.

Doing Better (?)

At this point I started planning more carefully. I settled on Lorna as undervalued and decided to get a bunch of Light Cards. This batch I got Werewolf, Divine Healer, Peacebringer, Alpha Clay Golems, Feral Spirit, Eagles, Crystalsmith, and filled out with some Neutrals such as Uraeus, Sand Worm, Goblin Mech, and others. I've done better on these purchases overall.

Around this time Chaos Legion was approaching. And unfortunately here I made my biggest mistakes while filling my account with ~$7400K of Hive. The key mistakes are here so pay attention!

Key Mistake #1: Do More Research, Seriously

I wouldn't be holding a bunch of junk if I had done more research. I would have also saved a ton of money. Did you know:

1. Chaos Legion will more than double the card supply in the game?
2. DEC is pegged to 1000=$1 and the game actively works to achieve this?
3. DEC dropped hard after the last set release (DICE)?
4. Exactly how the Airdrop point totals work?
5. The exact mechanics of reward cards and how much supply is out there right now?

I didn't know any of this. Now that I learned a hard lesson, I will be better prepared.

Key Mistake #2: Timing is Everything

As Chaos Legion approached, I got a bit busy with work and ended up late to the party. Yes hindsight is 20/20 but I ended up buying into SPS closer to the peak than the bottom. In retrospect it doesn't take a genius to realize the price of the token will spike up as the new set approaches. I'll know this for the next release.

It looks like the sharps dumped the token after this. I could have saved a lot of money by buying SPS slightly earlier instead of literally right in the middle of the launch day.

Key Mistake #3: Playing to Win and Playing to Win Money are Way Different

Due to my background as a competitive gamer, and with disposable income, I was looking to push rating. This led me to buy many reward cards to raise my collection level. Most newer reward cards, which have the largest supply by far of any cards in the game, have collapsed in price since Chaos Legion. In retrospect this makes perfect sense.

I made a lot of impatient reward card buys to raise my collection level. It's cost me a lot of money. Next time I will know that a new set will pump the card pool and hurt the highest supply cards first. I can excuse buying reward cards from weeks ago but I can't excuse what I did on launch day.

On launch day I wanted to hit a Gold collection level for some reason. Even though none of my summoners or cards are at gold level. So I bought a ton of cards, including reward cards. I bought 4x Gold foil Tarsas at $125 each, wanting to immediately build a Fire deck (Malric was more expensive) for rating. Most buys I did on launch day were terrible as you'd expect. I overpaid for new cards, for no real reason considering I plan on staying at Silver. And cards have tanked since then.

Wrapping it all Up

These mistakes were expensive but they won't ruin me. The key is to learn from these and improve for the next time. I'm excited to move forward in this game. The next post I make will outline my future plans and how to do better 😀

Referral Program and Giveaway

Join Splinterlands through my link and let's work together! Happy to share cards and strategies.

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